Napoleon’s Inspiration and Leadership

Across the sands of Egyptian deserts, into almost every capital city of Europe, and even across the frozen wastes of Russia. Napoleon’s soldiers would literally follow him anywhere. What was the secret of his success?

On Thursday, 13th June 1793, the twenty-three-year-old Lieutenant Napoleon Bonaparte stepped ashore at Toulon in the south of France having escaped from a political maelstrom on his homeland island of Corsica: he was a penniless, almost friendless refugee. Yet six years later he had become First Consul and dictator of France, and five years after that Emperor of the French and master of the most powerful nation on the Continent. How did he do it?
Of course part of the explanation was luck; he was fortunate to be nineteen years old when the French Revolution broke out, permitting him to rise up the ranks of the French army to become a general at the age of only twenty-four, in part because th ...